


Erasure

by Wolves_of_Innistrad



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Future, Gen, M/M, Researcher Stiles, dub-con memory erasure, in the past, sterek, tags added as I do chapters, vaguely canon compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:44:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolves_of_Innistrad/pseuds/Wolves_of_Innistrad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To protect Stiles from a coming threat, Scott and Derek erase his and his father's memories of the supernatural before he moves away for college.  When Stiles stumbles upon a cache of files on supernatural and mythological lore for his paper on the history of werewolves though, he starts getting flashes of memory, snippets of things he isn't sure how he knows.  Haunted by visions of the girl with the fiery hair, the boy with the line tattoo and bright green eyes, how will Stiles cope?  Will he find out what happened to him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Always, I Want To Be With You

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning over consent issues. Not sexual, but Stiles' memory wipe could be triggering due to the emotional nature of it and the way it's written. While canonically (For me anyway) he had consented to it originally, when he realized the full extent of it he didn't want to go through with it. So, dub-con or maybe non-con in regards to the memory wipe. I didn't realize until after writing it how truly upsetting it played out so... Yeah. :( 
> 
> Otherwise everything else should be fine.

          “Derek… Derek please,” Stiles begs, tears streaming down his eyes.  The older man is holding his hands in his, a mixture of comfort and control.  They can’t risk Stiles trying to make a run for it, even if they’d catch him easily.  This has to be done soon and without anyone finding out.  Besides the pack that is, the pack knew, it was only fair.

          The older man looks up with sad eyes, tear-stained and bloodshot, signs of sleepless nights and stressful days evident in the bags drooping underneath.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry Stiles.  This… It’s for your own good,” Derek says, voice strained like a wire that’s taut and ready to snap.  “I wish you’d be able to remember how much I love you.  Why this was the only way, but I can’t allow it.”

          Stiles eyes water up, staring imploringly at the man he has grown to love, suddenly feeling some of that old hatred bubbling up inside despite himself.  “Please… Anything but that Der’!  Let me remember us, please.”  Stiles squeezes Derek’s hands tight, nails digging into skin, knuckles turning white.

          “I can’t…” Derek begins, thumbs gently stroking Stiles’ hands.  “This, it’s for your own good.  We all decided.   You agreed.  This is for the best.”

          The tears come harder now, Stiles’ face marred by a sadness Derek wishes he could kiss off his face, one he is bringing on by his own actions, however justified he believes they may be.  “Besides Stiles,” Scott speaks up, having not said anything since the whole ordeal began.  “I… I have to take everything Stiles.”

          “Everything?” Stiles croaks, head craning to look at his best friend.  “I thought, I thought it was just the supernatural stuff?  Just werewolves and Darach’s and the Void?”  

          “No… It’s, it’s everything Stiles.  Derek, me, Lydia, Allison… Everything,” Scott says, voice calm, silent as a whisper.  

          Stiles’ eyes bug out at that, head whipping back to Derek almost too fast to track, even for werewolf eyes.  “No.  No no no!  I can’t lose all of you!  You know what that’s like for me!  Losing my mom, nearly losing my dad, my friends…  I can’t lose all of you!” he cries, voice a strangled yelp.  

          Derek has to look away, try to deaden his senses so he can deal with this.  He can hear the erratic thud of Stiles heart, the one that means danger, means pain and suffering.  The scent of fear, of loss yet to come and salty tears.  He tries to block it out, but his body is too attuned to Stiles now, too alert to his every movement, his likes, habits, tics.  

          “You won’t be losing us… not really,” Scott says, gripping Stiles’ shoulders tight, trying desperately not to begin bawling himself.  “It’ll be like… It’ll be like we never existed Stiles.  I’m taking it all, down to the day before you woke me up to go search for Laura.  And a little more besides that.”

          Stiles keens, long and high, wishing someone, anyone would stop this.  Nothing is worth this, not even his own life he thinks, knowing that aside from his father, the pack is really all he has.  He'd accepted it before, chose his own life over near-certain death.  Now though, now it felt like he was dying anyway.  He opens his mouth to speak, but is silenced by a finger held up by Derek.

          “I love you.  I love you so much, and this hurts me almost as much as it hurts you. I know… I know for the moment you can remember all this, you’ll hate me.  I’m fine with that, fine with knowing your last thoughts of me will be rage and grief, if it means you live.  I would do anything, even hurting you like this, to make sure you live.  This way, you’ll have a chance Stiles!  You can live a normal life again, far away from here.  I love you… Goodbye Stiles,” Derek says, with sincerity.  Then, before Stiles can protest anymore, Derek nods to Scott, who begins the ritual.

          Stiles shrieks and jerks about, only held down by Scott and Derek’s superior strength.  As he thrashes, long, black veins snake across Derek’s arms as he absorbs any pain.  A last gift to the boy who gave him everything, and who he now had to steal everything from.  

          Stiles feels the claw in his neck only a second, then things go fuzzy.  It’s like his life flashes by in a blur, moments scattered and discordant.  When they finally begin to settle, it’s like looking at a night sky, filled with twinkling stars.  Then, one by one, the stars begin to disappear.  Some blinking out in an instant; Jackson, the Darach, Gerard.  Others flickering in and out before dying; Werewolves, Isaac, Druids.  Finally the last few pulsing slowly, burning brighter and brighter as Stiles struggles to hold on, to save something, anything.  Alas, he is unable to stop it, they burn out and die; Lydia, Scott, Derek, all fading before his eyes.

          When it’s over they lay him on his bed, still twitching, a small trickle of blood running from his nose.  Both men give him forelorned and worried looks.

          "Is he going to be ok?” Scott asks, nervous about what he’s just done to his friend.

          “Deaton and Peter said it should work.  Now we just need to drop them off.  Stiles at college, the Sheriff at their new house,” Derek sighs.  The men retreat downstairs, stairs creeking and clanging as their shoes hit hard wood.  

          The sheriff looks up at them with sad eyes, not unlike those of his son.  “Is it done?” he asks, wringing his hands as he sits in the kitchen.  

          Derek nods, stoic.  “Now we just need… We have to,” Derek stammers, suddenly getting cold feet.

          “Come on Derek, we have to finish this,” Scott says, urging him forward.

          “Maybe… Maybe we should wait.  Maybe we should let him keep his memories, so he can protect Stiles better.”

          “No.  I want Stiles to be safe too, but this is what we agreed on, besides,” Scott says, switching his voice so low only Derek with his werewolf hearing can make it out.  “I can’t do that to him.  He’s like my father, likely would have been my father soon.  I don’t want him to remember what he had to let happen to Stiles.  He doesn’t deserve to lose my mom, but he did it to keep Stiles safe.  If nothing else, he deserves to have the same treatment just so he doesn’t have to remember.”

          The sheriff remains sitting, eyeing the men from a distance.  Even though he can’t hear them, he figures he knows what they are discussing.  “As much as I feel like I deserve to remember this.  To feel the guilt over Stiles’ loss… I think it’s for the best.  I’ll always be worried and might eventually say something.  Or if I got drunk and started rambling, the poor boy would think I was crazy.  This, it’s for the best,” the sheriff chokes out.  His voice catches on a sob and Scott’s heart hurts for him.  Stiles may be losing more people, more memories, but he knew what the sheriff was losing meant a lot to him.  His own mother hadn’t stopped crying for the last few days.

          “Ready…” Scott says, stepping forward with Derek to finish their sad deed.

**********  


**6 Months later.**

          Stiles sits at his computer desk, eyes scanning a page as he feverishly writes out notes.  This essay on the history of European folklore has gotten way out of hand.  He was supposed to chronicle just one thing, one aspect.  He’d struggled with it for a while, starting one topic only to abandon it for another.  Each tme he dug deeper, he found something new that interested him more.  Finally though, he’d settled on a topic; werewolves.  He’d scoured the library for resources, but found them lacking, retreating to the virtual archives to find something.  

          After a bit of searching, he found a site that peaked his interest.  It allowed you to store files from their archive and make your own notes on them.  He figured that might be helpful, so he went to the registration page, typing in his info.

          [StilinskiisourKing is already a registered username]  

          “Huh?” he said, tilting his head.  The faint blue light of the screen flickered across his face.  Wondering who in the world would use his typical moniker, he began to try something.  Over and over he typed in different passwords, returning error messages each time.  “Well, guess that’s it,” he said to himself, nearly resigned to leaving the weird incident alone.  Then an idea struck him.  “G-E-N-“ he began typing, finishing it and pressing enter.  That fateful keystroke would send him down a rabbithole he hadn’t expected.

          “It worked?” he said quizzically, quirking an eyebrow as he logged into the site, seeing tons of files apparently saved to this account.  An account he knew he hadn’t created, yet used his pseudonym and his birth name for a password.  Clicking around, he was delighted to discover most of the articles seemed to be on the exact topic he was looking for; werewolves.  The first few he opened seemed to be in latin and other dead languages.  Archaic French, Akkadian, Sanskrit.  Nevertheless, their were marks all over them, notes digitally scribbled in corners and along sides.  He gasped, looking through and recognizing his own drawling cursive flowing through the words.  

          Staring blankly at the screen, his mind raced.  “What the actual fuck?” he asked to no one, studying the pages.  He couldn’t remember ever learning or even researching the languages, but somewhere deep in his mind, he began processing little pieces, a word here, a sentence there.  He couldn’t fully make them out, but it was like trying to remember the lyrics to your favorite song after not hearing it in years.  Slowly he began to get snippets of information.  Starting to freak out, he slammed the lid closed.  Then, unable to stifle his curiosity, he came back only moments later, diving back in.

          "Did… did I do this?  It’s, this is my handwriting but I… I don’t remember ever reading any of this, why, when, how?” he mumbled, leg bouncing and jittering like when he ran out of Adderall.  Trawling through the articles, he found more and more, all about werewolves save for a few.  Mythical lizards, vengeance spirits, Druids, were-foxes, all things he’d made extensive notes on without remembering any of it.  “What is this?”  Finally he began to panic.  How had he forgotten doing all this?  It would have taken months, years to amass a collection like this, to take the extensive, cross-referenced and meticulous notes that were present.  Heck, to learn languages he’d barely ever seen before.

          That was the weirdest part, the languages.  Even now his mind was getting flashes, snippets of words and phrases in dead tongues, things he had no right to know, even for a double major in Folklore and Criminology.  Then it hit him.  An image, fleeting and fuzzy.  Red hair cascading down a slender back. A laugh like fire and ice, eyes that held wells of knowledge.  A pang of grief and regret hit him like a blow to the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.  He’d never seen this girl to his memory, but there she was, dancing tantalizingly out of reach in his consciousness.    Mind racing, his breath started to hitch, sinking to his knees with a loud thud.

          “Stiles?” his father called from the hall, opening the door and seeing his son on the floor.  

          “P-pan-“ Stiles eked out before his throat closed off and the room started spinning.  His father rushed to his side, holding him tight until it subsided.  He couldn’t remember having a panic attack since his mother had died, but this, this was all too much.  Everything felt surreal.

          “Are you alright son?” his father asked, pulling away slightly.  He helped him stand up and sat him down on the edge of his bed.

          “Y-yeah.  Just, you know, stress with school.  Or something,” he lied, hating how easy it seemed to come to him.  He remembered being a handful as a child, but not outright lying to his dad.  That only made the night all the more troubling, how easy it was to just sweep the truth away like so much inconsequential dust. “I just, I need some sleep.  Been studying for too long.”

          His father gave him a pat on the back and stood, crossing to the door.  “Then get some sleep Stiles.  I’ll see you in the morning.  Night kiddo.”

          “Night dad,” Stiles answered, laying back in his bed.  His mind raced with thoughts and questions, but he tried to shake it off, promising himself he’d deal with it tomorrow.   Sleep came surprisingly easy despite his troubled mind.  He dreamed of brilliant emerald eyes.  Ones filled with longing and love; seeming to flash a brilliant electric blue for just a moment, before returning to their native hue.  


	2. And Make Believe With You

          He’s running.  Twigs slash his face and brambles seem to reach up from nowhere, twisting vines eager to strangle and ensnare anything they can grasp.  Cold night air blows through his plaid shirt, moonlight the only illumination, and pale at that.  Stiles isn’t sure what he’s running from, but he knows he has to get away, flight mechanism boosting his muscles, letting him run harder and longer.

          Out of breath after a few more minutes of sprinting, he trips, jeans scraping against the hard ground.  Looking down, the faintest trickle of blood seeps through the fresh rip in the denim.  The noise comes again, a long, low growl.  He scrambles back, scuttling away and running into a tree with a loud thunk from his head hitting the trunk.  

          “Stiles!” a voice calls, deep and panicked.

          His head swivels to either side, shaking off the pain as he struggles to find out where the voice came from.  Then, from the bushes, blue eyes appear, nearly sparking with electricity.

          “Stiles!” the voice calls again, shaking him from sleep.

          Awakening in a cold sweat, he thrashes in the blankets, comforter flinging to the floor.  Trembling hands reach up to his chest, feeling the staccato rhythm playing beneath his ribcage.  “W-what?” he asks, eyes searching the room for the voice that could have called out to him.  There’s nothing there though, only the ivory lightness of the moon skulking in through the window.  Hs feet swing over the edge, taking a shaky step as he stands.  The plush grey carpet spreads out beneath him, toes curling into the softness.  As he crosses to the window, he hikes up his falling sweatpants, careening farther down until his correction of course, baring his toned yet not overly muscular abdominals.  

          The blinds close with their usual thwacking sound, one which Stiles hopes won’t wake his father.  The poor man had been working night shifts as a security guard to help him pay tuition.  It had been a step down from his last job as a sheriff, but they’d left abruptly.  He couldn’t really remember why, only that he had a vague sense of uneasiness about it, like they were running away.  That wasn’t surprising, since his few memories of Beacon Hills were of being alone, unpopular, both of them missing his mother.

          A yawn, deep and tiring, breaks him from his thoughts and compels him towards his bed again.  Tomorrow he went back to school.  Back to the dorms and his asshole roommate.  The pretty boy jock always made fun of him, taunted and teased him in a way that always felt familiar.  It often felt like he’d known him forever, and that did nothing for how badly he wanted to punch the dick right in his smug face.  He lay back down, determined to get at least a few hours of sleep.  

          He did, for the most part.  However, when he awoke, he remembered the most vivid dream of a boy with an odd tattoo; straight lines running in a circle along his arm.  He felt an overwhelming kinship with him in the dream, but for the life of him couldn’t discern a face, name, or anything else about him.

**********  


          All along the drive back to campus, he forced himself to not think about the odd dreams and even odder website.  He’d bookmarked it, and even, in a bout of what surely must be lunacy, written down the details he could remember of the three images.

          Back in his room, he’d thrown off his jacket and dropped the messenger back slung across his shoulder to his lumpy bed.  The sheets were disheveled, just the way he’d left them before break.  Luckily his roommate hadn’t returned yet, or was just out, which meant he could look into things without being disturbed.  The first thing he did was pull up the absurd list of the three pseudo-memories or dreams, he wasn’t sure what to call them.  He was tempted to throw them in the trash, delete the offending file from his computer, but he found he couldn’t.  Instead, he went over the list of information he’d meticulously gathered about each experience.

  * Red-headed girl: Long, strawberry blonde/red hair.  Cold, yet somehow warm laugh, with intelligent eyes.  Felt deep longing when the memory surfaced.
  * Green eyes: Mysterious.  Swore they flashed bright blue in my dream.  Not much else.
  * Tattoo boy: Felt related to him in some way.  Skin seemed lightly tanned or dark.  Two lines going in a circle constituted the tattoo.



          Chewing on the pen cap, he swiveled around quickly as his roommate filed in along with his teammates.  “Hello Blaise,” he drawled, barely wanting to acknowledge the jerk standing before him.  It was a travesty the man was so hot.  All that gorgeousness wasted on a pretentious twit.

          Blaise simply nodded, rolling his eyes as he turned to his friends.  “So anyway, after that we totally banged.  She was sooo into it; screamed my name for a solid five minutes straight,” he said, receiving a chorus of jeers and laughter.

          Stiles scoffed, having forgot to what depths of jackassery Blaise sunk most days.

          “Problem Stilinski?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.  His cronies quieted down, looking between the two men.

          “No, in fact, I was just leaving,” Stiles replied, snatching up his computer and depositing it back in his bag.  With practiced flare, he strode out of the room, leaving a swath of tittering idiots in his wake.

          The walk across campus was pleasant enough, finding Stiles at the library without much thought.  He entered, searching out the small room his few friends tended to congregate at.  As he arrived, he noticed movement through the single window into the room.  Upon closer inspection, he saw two of his friends studying.  Flinging the door open, he smiled, glad to see a couple friendly faces.

          “Din!  Croak!” he called, receiving a shushing noise from them both.  Din, Dinara to her parents even against her wishes, smiled despite her admonishment, bright hazel eyes twinkling.  The sterile halogen lights washed out her skin, leaving her normally dark complexion instead sandy, like the beach at low tide.  Jimmy Croaker sat beside her, horn rimmed glasses leaving the familiar dent on either side of his face.  It wasn’t so much that he had a big head, regardless of what Din said during finals, but that he hadn’t changed prescriptions since he was twelve.  In those intervening years he’d grown, and grown, until his lanky frame had turned, as he would call it, embarrassingly athletic.  A geek by birth and choice, Croak had that sallow, computer lit tan so rarely found on a man his size. 

          Quieting down, Stiles closed the door quietly, taking a seat across from his fellows.  “So, how was your break guys?” he asked, all false cheer and politeness.  Even if he was preoccupied with his own dealings, these were the people he’d chosen to be friends with, he should at least make an effort to be cordial.

          “Cut the crap Stilinski.  We both know you’re just here to ogle Croak’s biceps like always,” Din said, eyes locked on her book, belying the devious grin slowly spreading across her face.

          With a look of mock outrage, Stiles flaied in his seat, looking, mouth agape, between his friends.  “How dare you!  I’ve never been so insulted!” he squawked at her defensively, eyes falling imploringly on a blushing Croak.

          The buffer boy caught his look and flushed a deeper scarlet.  “Please stop objectifying me,” he said, unable to stop a small laugh from bubbling up.

          Din side eyed him, eyebrow raised in her signature smirking expression.  “As if you weren’t just telling me about the muscle jock you were with over break who, in your own words, ‘worshipped each bulging muscle from your pectorals to your p-'“

          “Shut up!” Croak shouted, blush spreading to his ears, tips now bright red.  “I-I wasn’t that graphic!” he protested.

          “Sure you weren’t buddy,” Stiles answered, sharing a smile with Din.  Though he lamented his physique regularly, Croak was loathe to actually deny any man who wanted him for it.  Even if he wanted to be liked for his mind, he was content with being the hot muscular guy they brought home after enduring his drunken lecture on Pre-Socratic philosophy or Network Infrastructure.

          Din slammed her book shut, sneering at the scandalized look Stiles gave her.  “I’m so done with Architecture.  If I have to look at another Frank Lloyd Wright, I think I might vomit,” she huffed, shoving the offending textbook into her backpack.  “So what’s up with you?”

          Stiles considered for a moment, wondering whether he wanted to mention the curious website and dreams.  His contemplation obviously lasted longer than he though, Din smacking him in the arm.  “Whu-?  Sorry, kinda drifted off there.”

          “You ok Stiles?  Getting enough sleep?” Croak asked, pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose.  

          Stiles shrugged noncommittally.  “Guess so.  Like, something weird happened the other day and I’m just kind of, I don’t even know at this point,” he admitted, hands swirling in front of him, drawing a mental image of nothing in particular.  

          “Why the trouble?” Croak asked, closing his own book now and placing his clasped hands on top of it.  “What exactly happened?”

          Din had her trademark smile on, just waiting for the latest Stilinski embarrassment to surface.  “You told me you’d let me live-blog your next mortifying experience!” she pretend pouted.

          “Well this wasn’t exactly planned.  And it was less mortifying than it was profoundly disturbing…” he said, trailing off.  When he glanced back at his assembled compatriots, they both had skeptical looks on their faces.  “What?  It was weird!  I found this, this website!”

          “Porn,” the two said, turning to each other with mirrored glee.  Oh how they enjoyed teasing him.

          “It was not porn!” he nearly shouted, quieting as he remembered they were still in the library.  “I was doing research on werewolves for my Folklore essay, and I found this pretty cool website.  Anyway, comes to find out someone had an account with my username and password already.  On it there were like, years worth of articles on werewolves and other shit.”

          Croak gave him an odd look before reaching down and rummaging in his bag.  Soon he produced a tablet and began turning it on.

          “Anyway, that’s not the weirdest part.  You can write notes on the articles and stuff.  They have my handwriting...  All.  Over.  Them.” He said, voice barely hinting at the panic he was trying to contain.  “And they weren’t even all in English.  Some were in Latin, or Sanskrit!  I could even read bits and pieces of it.  Like, I’ve never studied Sanskrit, why can I read it now?”

          The tablet slid across the table, Croak pointing at it.  “Show us, this seems really strange,” he added, looking back at Din, concerned.  Stiles proceeded to pull up the site in question, swiftly logging in and opening a few of the more legible examples.

          Retrieving a notebook from his backpack, he dropped it on the table next to the tablet.  “Look!  Same handwriting.  My username and password, but I don’t remember ever having seen any of this before yesterday.”  His friends flipped through the pages, analyzing and comparing the words on paper and screen.

          “Ok, that’s some spooky shit,” Din said, handing the tablet back to Croak.  “And you say you’ve never used this site before?”

          “No.  And that’s still not all.  I’m having, like, snippets of, well, I’m not even sure how to describe what they are…” he said, rubbing his arm nervously.

          Croak put away the tablet, giving him a sympathetic, yet confused, look in the process.

          “Well, you see…  I’ve been having these like, visions?  Memories?  Dreams sometimes, I’m not sure.  It’s just, these feelings, or fleeting images.  There’s this girl with fiery hair.  And a guy with a weird tattoo.  Then there’s the man, animal, I’m not even sure of which, with the brilliant jade eyes.  I feel like I’m connected to them, it’s like, it’s like remembering something that never happened, if that makes sense?”

          “Sounds like some past life shit,” Din said, tucking her hair behind her ear.  “I’ve heard my aunty talk about that stuff before.  Visions of past lives, stuff like that.”

          A quizzical look was shot at her from Croak.  “But a past life wouldn’t explain the website?” he countered, turning in his seat.  “That had to be done by either Stiles, or someone who knew him and could copy his handwriting… and read a bunch of different languages.  You know, I’m even confused now.  Want me to trace the IP of the old registration or something?”

          “Nah, not yet.  I just, I need to think about it a bit.  Maybe I was really sick and delirious when I made the account?” he offered, a feeble attempt at rationalizing it all.

          “Doesn’t seem very logical to me,” Croak responded.

          "Not really,” Din concurred, eyes filled with an uncharacteristic worry.

          Stiles hung his head a moment, then pulled back up, smiling.  “I’m sure it’s nothing.  I’ll figure it out eventually.  Let’s just go get lunch, I’m starving.”  His suggestion was met with a reluctant acceptance by the group, the trio heading off to the dining hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo another chapter! And it's actually slightly longer!
> 
> As always, thanks to all my Wonderful Readers!
> 
> Did you all see the Winter Premiere? Poor Stiles! He's already a mess, not sure how I'm gonna get through this season without bawling.

**Author's Note:**

> Another WIP... Will I ever learn? Had a dream about this, so I just had to write it out. Hope you all enjoy!
> 
> As always, thanks to all my Wonderful Readers!


End file.
